Category: Immigration

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Malcolm Turnbull’s defence of Nauru.

    This is Frank Brennan’s most recent post of Facebook.

    When interviewed by Fran Kelly this morning, Malcolm Turnbull suggested it was a simple binary choice: strong border protection including the cruel, endless warehousing of proven refugees (including children) on places like Nauru OR deaths at sea.  It’s not a simple binary choice, and he knows it is not.  If the government’s priority were safety at sea they would be transparent with us in how they intercept boats and send the people back to Indonesia, being so concerned about the safety of those very people on the boats. But that’s not their main priority.   Their main priority and their main concern is stopping people coming to Indonesia and then leaving Indonesia heading to Australia seeking asylum.

    There are three options: 1. Stopping and turning back the boats AND warehousing refugees on Nauru and Manus Island; 2. Stopping and turning back boats AND resettling the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island in a timely manner; and 3 NOT stopping and turning boats back.  Option 2 deserves consideration by our major political parties when they are satisfied that those on the boats are not fleeing persecution IN Indonesia and when they provide through UNHCR and IOM adequate processing and security IN Indonesia.  Government, the Opposition, and refugee advocates should do more work on Option 2.  By positing a choice only between Option 1 and Option 3, we are either positing the impossible objective of a hermetically sealed border or making the perfect the enemy of the good.

    Fr Frank Brennan SJ
    Professor of Law
    Australian Catholic University

  • JAMES ROSE. From Tampa to now: how reporting on asylum seekers has been a triumph of spin over substance.

     

    Spin designed to dehumanise and demonise asylum seekers.

    This year marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most divisive national election campaigns in Australia’s recent history: the Tampa affair.

    Coming just weeks after the September 11 terror attacks, the pitched battle between John Howard and Kim Beazley drew heavily on fear and panic. The divisions of 2001 are not only still with us, but they are far deeper today.

    The September 11 terrorist attacks in the US were given a sharp-knife twist here in Australia. The country was still entangled in the issue of the MV Tampa and its cargo of more than 400 desperate asylum seekers. And there was a public outcry over the events surrounding the interception of the SIEV-4 and its 223 asylum seekers – some of whom, politicians claimed, had thrown their children overboard.

    The way the media frames public debate on asylum seekers and their impact on Australia was forged in this time. Three key strategies helped achieve this. (more…)

  • Catholic Bishops – It Is Time To Bring Them Here

    Statement in support of offshore detainees
    By Archbishop Denis Hart, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

    One of the greatest crises of our day is the plight of people forced from their own countries by war, persecution or poverty and forced to live without a home, without safety and often separated from their families.

    Pope Francis has called on Catholics to welcome such vulnerable people as our brothers and sisters. In Australia, we do not have to directly meet the responsibilities that many other nations bear. But we do bear the shame of the expulsion and harsh treatment of the people who sought our protection only to be detained on Nauru and Manus Island. (more…)

  • ROBERT MANNE. Oh, No Jim, No Jim, No Jim, No

                                        

    As readers of John Menadue’s blog might be aware, I believe that Australia ought, on the one hand, to find homes in the next months for the 1,700 or so refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island who we are allowing to be destroyed in body and spirit and, on the other, retain the policy of naval interception and return to point of departure so as to avoid a return to the situation of 2009-2013 when 50,000 asylum seekers reached Australia by boat and 1,000 or 1,200 drowned.

    Accordingly, my position on the question of how Australia should now respond to the asylum seeker issue is close to Father Frank Brennan’s and, roughly speaking, equidistant between the position of two other panellists on Monday night’s Q & A, the legal idealist Professor Jane McAdam, and the military realist, the architect of the Operation Sovereign Borders policy, General Jim Molan. While however I disagreed with several of Jane McAdam’s ideas, I was appalled and angered by both the tone and content of several of Jim Molan’s remarks. (more…)

  • PETER YOUNG. Unlike Jim Molan, We must not look away from the harm we are causing.

     

    Monday’s Q&A gave a good insight into the philosophy and principles behind Australia’s Sovereign Borders Policy as described by one of its chief architects Jim Molan. Most telling was his argument that the means of maintaining tight border control and supposedly saving lives at sea justified the ends of indefinite cruelty, suffering and mental harm. He showed no empathy towards the suffering imposed by the policy he authored and did not have the courage to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of the mental harm it produces resulting in mental illness, self-harm and suicide. It was clear that from the perspective of the Sovereign Borders that the continued punishment and suffering of the people in Nauru and Manus, as well as those in Australia with temporary protection visas is seen as a necessary part of the policy. (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Being clear eyed and misty eyed about human rights and asylum seekers.

     

    On 5 October 2016, Frank Brennan gave the Fourth Notre Dame Social Justice Lecture.

    He said

    “It is time to see if we can design a way of getting the asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island in such a way that we don’t restart boats. … The suggestion that those camps need to remain filled in order to send a message to people smugglers so that the boats will stay stopped is not only morally unacceptable, it is strategically questionable.  … In August, I joined Robert Manne, Time Costello and John Menadue in calling for an end to the limbo imposed on proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. I think this can be done while keeping the boats stopped. … Warehousing proven refugees for years on end is not an option.”

    See link to lecture below:

    https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/preview.aspx?aeid=49988

  • ROBERT MANNE. Rescuing 1700 marooned people.

      

    At present the chief priority of those concerned about the refugee situation in which Australia is directly implicated is to save the lives of the 1500 or so on Manus Island and Nauru and the 250 or so at present in Australia on medical grounds.

    When this is achieved the next priority will be to struggle to provide the present “case-load” of around 30,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Australia with full citizen rights—to be treated as refugees brought to Australia have been treated—so they can live decent human lives.

    What is peculiar about the nature of the political problem posed by Nauru and Manus Island? (more…)

  • HUGH MACKAY. A policy that diminishes us all

     

    Occasionally in a nation’s history, horror over past events triggers a kind of national shame. Germany went through it – is still going through it – in the wake of the Third Reich. South Africa has not yet healed the wounds of apartheid. The US continues to struggle with the evil legacy of white supremacism.

    In Australia, we haven’t had a Holocaust. We haven’t institutionalised racial discrimination (though we’ve come close). But there have been periods in our short history that have cast very dark shadows across our national psyche, evoking entirely appropriate feelings of shame. (more…)

  • TONY KEVIN. Shipwreck tragedy raises broad issues of duty of care in border protection

     

    Last week saw three days of hearings (reported in The Guardian by Ben Doherty),adjourned on Wednesday 28 September until Tuesday 4 October as plaintiffs await key documents from the 2012 WA Coroners’ Court inquest into the disaster which drowned 50 people on 21 December 2010, when a SIEV boat crashed in heavy seas into low jagged cliffs at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Township-dwellers watched horrified from above as Australian Navy and Customs rescue crews in inflatable motor vessels arrived too late to tow the breaking-up boat off the rocks. Despite valiant efforts they were only able to save 39 people from the water. The class action is on behalf of families of dead victims, traumatised survivors and traumatised people involved in the SIEV221 rescue operation. (more…)

  • JOHN FITZGERALD. Beijing’s Guoqing versus Australia’s way of life.

    Beijing’s role in the Chinese community media in Australia is increasingly in conflict with its own demand for respect.

    Beijing is tired of foreign analysts criticising China simply for being what it is. A former Chinese ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, made thepoint succinctly in her current role as vice–foreign minister: “The West is too arrogant and must stop lecturing us and trying to change China. Unless you can accept China as it is, there is no basis for a relationship.”

    But what is China, exactly? Is it getting its message across overseas? In the case of Australia, what does China’s engagement with Chinese community and social media tell us about the Chinese party-state? If Australians were to take up Fu Ying’s challenge and accept her country for what it is, would China welcome a little more plain-speaking about what it is up to in Australian community media?

    I raise these questions in the hope that a frank conversation about Chinese propaganda operations in Australia will help to build a more solid foundation for Australia–China relations into the future – a relationship that Australians need to get right if they are to ensure their national prosperity, security and way of life over the decades ahead. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Cruelty and evil have become banal

     

    Malcolm Turnbull told the UN that our treatment of refugees is world’s best practice. Only a guilty conscience could allow such self deception.

    In her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, published in 1963, Hannah Arendt refers to the ‘banality of evil’. Her thesis was that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely stupid person who relied on cliché rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. She says ‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil’. (more…)

  • BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalition’s Backpacker tax and work rights package

     

    The Coalition’s backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australia’s working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). …. The Coalition’s main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a long-term basis. But the new policy applies to WHMs in all sectors. (more…)

  • MICHAEL KELLY SJ. Winners are grinners – asylum seekers in Bangkok.

     

    In the great race of life, it’s well to savor the few winners you back. Such was my experience last week. For some years, I’ve been helping a small group of asylum seekers survive against the odds in Bangkok.

    The win was a simple one as all the best wins are. After almost four years of waiting, five asylum seekers I’ve been able to help – thanks to the financial support of Australian friends – are making their way to resettlement in Canada. Five down and 28 to go.

    There’s no great virtue in doing what you can for people down on their luck. It used to be part of being Australian and Christian and Jewish. Fortunately I have Australian friends who are Christian or Jewish enough to remember what our religions are about. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. World’s best practice – the Gulags on Manus and Nauru.

     

    At a sparsely attended audience well past prime time at the United Nations General Assembly, Malcolm Turnbull used his pulpit to proclaim that Australia’s border security was the world’s best.

    And it is – up to a point. Not since the demolition of the Berlin Wall has there been such ruthless sealing of our frontiers. The boats may not have stopped entirely, but they have been very effectively repelled from our shores.

    We have, as even Peter Dutton, Turnbull’s hanger on in New York, admitted, something of a natural boundary; the country is, as our national anthem notes, girt by sea. No other major nation on earth has such an advantage. (more…)

  • TRAVERS McLEOD, PETER HUGHES, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE, STEVEN WONG, TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI. Developing a regional refugee framework.

    September has seen a surge of international summits. First came the G20 in Hangzhou, then ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, plus the Pacific Islands Forum in Pohnpei.

    And, on consecutive days this week, the United Nations in New York hosted a summit on refugees and migrants, followed by US President Barack Obama’s special leaders’ summit on refugees. Representatives from government, business and civil society gathered to decide how best to move the dial on unprecedented mass displacement.

    It’s easy to be sceptical of talkfests, but the New York summits carried special significance. They show that forced migration has become a matter of high politics. And unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries across the globe. (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. The hypocrisy of it all is breath-taking.

    As you listen to the self-satisfied, self-congratulatory observations of our Australian representatives at the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants and at the Obama summit, just ask yourself what Messrs Turnbull and Dutton have done to provide a humane solution for the proven refugees on Nauru (and Manus Island), given that after three years the Abbott and Turnbull governments have  not resettled one proven refugee.  You will recall that the MOU with Nauru was signed by the Rudd Government just prior to the 2013 election and that Richard Marles, the Labor shadow minister, told us during the recent election that the expectation was that the whole thing would be done and dusted within a year.  (more…)

  • ELAINE PEARSON. Australia’s harsh refugee policy is no global model.

    This week in New York, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, “Our policy on border protection is the best in the world,” and he’ll be touting the Australian model of offshore refugee detention and resettlement at two refugee summits this week. But Australia’s approach should give world leaders some pause.

    “I understand the need to protect the safety of Australians, the need to control the borders,” an Iranian refugee who had tried to reach Australia by boat told me. “But sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to drown at sea than live here.”

    I spoke with him on remote Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. Australia intercepts boats filled with desperate asylum seekers and sends them there or to the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru. These are no tropical island paradises, but offshore purgatory, where people endure a horrendous existence without hope for the future. (more…)

  • JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. Rising hostility to refugee movement.

     

    The inspiring poem by Emma Lazarus carved on the Statue of Liberty clearly reflects the ethos and caring spirit of a bygone era:

    “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempus-tost to me…” (more…)

  • PETER HUGHES. Who is running the show?

    A new narrative. Why Australian immigration policy needs a positive approach

    With Pauline Hanson taking a hard-line on immigration in the Senate, it’s time for the government to change its tune or risk relinquishing the debate.

    It’s time the Australian government put together a positive narrative for Australian immigration policy. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: On the Irish and other undesirables.

     

    Australia sometimes seems to suffer a mysterious case of multiple-amnesia over immigration.

    We are a nation built on migrants, but we have forgotten that almost every new wave of immigrants has been resented and resisted by those already here, especially those who were migrants themselves. It started around the 1820s when the convicts hated the first free settlers ‘taking our jobs’. We have forgotten that, without exception, each wave of immigrants has been successfully absorbed to national and individual benefit. We have forgotten that particular groups aroused special animosity, yet integrated so completely in one generation that it would scarcely occur to them to regard themselves as being of migrant origin. Such is Australia’s perhaps unique capacity to integrate and be enriched. (more…)

  • Nauru and Manus – the costs of detention.

    In this blog, we have drawn attention many times to the inhumanity of our policies towards refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus.

    In addition to our immoral conduct, there is also the extraordinary cost of keeping asylum seekers in detention. In the link below, Peter Martin in the SMH yesterday, estimates the cost at $573,000 for each asylum seeker, each year.

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-extraordinary-cost-of-keeping-asylum-seekers-in-detention-over-500000-each-20160914-grftcj.html

  • PATRICK McGORRY. We must settle the refugees before it is too late.

    In this article in the SMH, Patrick McGorry, the President of the Society for Mental Health Research, says;

    The time has come, before it is too late, to re-settle these fellow human beings and not just the children, but all of those who qualify as genuine refugees and who deserve a second chance for life.

    See link to article below:

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-must-resettle-the-refugees-before-it-is-too-late-20160907-grav05.html

     

     

  • SPENCER ZIFCAK. Freedom of Speech and the Racial Discrimination Act

     

    Within days of the July election result having finally been announced, forces within the Conservative faction of the Liberal-National party moved to re-open the debate on reform to S.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). Section 18C makes it a civil offence to insult, offend, humiliate or intimidate a person on the grounds of their race.

    The Prime Minister has made it clear that he is not interested in pursuing the matter. Sensibly, he does not want to re-open the damaging schism that occurred when hostilities on the issue broke out following the Federal Court’s 2011 judgment against the conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt.

    Pursuant to S.18C, Bolt was found to have humiliated the indigenous applicants in the case by implying recklessly and incorrectly that because they had fair skin they were not really aboriginal. And that having fair skin they had chosen falsely to identify as aboriginal in order unmeritoriously to obtain financial and professional advantage. (more…)

  • It’s Time to Close Australia’s Abusive Detention Regime

     

    In the last few years, there have been countless official reports that have exposed abuses and recommended the closure of centres on Nauru and Manus Island. November 2014, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention uncovered numerous reported incidents of assaults, sexual assaults and self-harm involving children; March 2015, an independent review by Philip Moss uncovered allegations of sexual abuse by staff in the detention centre in Nauru; August 2015, the Senate Select Committee’s final report into conditions at Nauru recommended the immediate release into the Australian community of all children and their families detained in Nauru and in onshore detention facilities; June 2016, an independent report titled “Protection Denied, Abuse Condoned: Women at Risk on Nauru” reported that “women were being routinely abused, raped and doomed to spend the rest of their lives on a tiny island nation, often alongside the perpetrators”; July 2016, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch researchers found that the Australian Government has “designed a system of deliberate abuse”, in Nauru to deter people seeking safety who arrive by boat. All of these reports were ignored by our politicians with the arrogance of history’s most callous rulers. (more…)

  • PARIS ARISTOTLE. Rescuing people on Nauru and Manus Island.

     

    Statement from the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, regarding people transferred by Australia to the refugee processing centres of Papua New Guinea and Nauru. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. On race discrimination.

     

    Assent by silence made Hitler’s crimes possible.

    As Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote:

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Socialist.
    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Jew.
    Then they came for me – and there was no-one left to speak for me. 

    The warning is as relevant as ever. The more we study how the Holocaust happened, the more we must realise how small steps of acceptance, acquiescence, rationalisation, political convenience and expedience, and above all, silence paved the path to hell from 1933 to 1945. For 80 years, we have glossed over the silent acquiescence of countries like the United States, Britain and Australia in the period after Hitler, for so long dismissed as just another ratbag, came to power by legal and constitutional means in Germany in 1933. (more…)

  • JULIA BAIRD. Australia’s Gulag Archipelago.

    In Dante’s view, the unfortunate souls who dwell in purgatory may suffer excruciating pain, but the promise of their final destination is clear: paradise. Those who languish on the remote, tiny islands — Manus and Nauru — that host Australia’s offshore immigration detention centers are not so lucky. (more…)

  • Anti-global backlash is realigning politics across the West.

    In the WorldPost, Nouriel Roubini writes “Across the West establishment parties of the Right and the Left are being disrupted – if not destroyed from the inside.  Within such parties, the losers from globalisation are finding champions of anti-globalisation that are challenging the formal mainstream orthodoxy.” (more…)

  • ‘Racists aren’t welcome here: how we kicked a racist passenger off the bus.

    A nice story from The Guardian ‘Our better angels’ .  See link below.  John Menadue

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/racists-arent-welcome-here-how-we-kicked-a-racist-passenger-off-the-bus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

  • DEE JARRAK. Is there a middle path to addressing Australia’s asylum seeker dilemma?

    Perhaps we could try to combine humanitarian principles with political pragmatism to find an acceptable “solution” to Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

    Offshore detention policies are falling apart, and a new documentary film, Chasing Asylum, is again arousing shame and anger at the appalling psychological and physical damage we inflict on people who have attempted to seek asylum in Australia.

    But then there’s a lot of righteous emotion on all sides of the asylum seeker debate. (more…)